Doubling Up for Formula One’s Desert Showdown

At the Formula One season’s finale, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday, the stage is set to have everyone from fans to teams seeing double.

The math for the showdown in the desert is basic enough: The driver who leads the championship has won twice as many races as the driver in second place, but the former could easily lose the title to the latter in the Abu Dhabi twilight because of a decision this season to award double points in the final race.

After the clear domination by one team and driver during the previous four seasons (Sebastian Vettel and his Red Bull team), the series sought this year to keep the title battle alive all the way to the final race. The goal was to maintain the interest of fans who might otherwise switch off once the drivers’ title had been decided, as happened last season, when Vettel had wrapped up his fourth straight title by October, with three races left to run.

So now the two Mercedes drivers who have dominated the season are entering the final race with Lewis Hamilton leading Nico Rosberg by 17 points and 10 victories to five, but with double points up for grabs Rosberg is in position to snatch the title.

Normally, 25 points are awarded for first place, 18 for second, 15 for third, 12 for fourth, 10 for fifth, 8 for sixth, 6 for seventh, 4 for eighth, 2 for ninth and 1 for 10th. But in Abu Dhabi this will be 50-36-30-24-20-16-12-8-4-2.

Rosberg’s task is clear: He will be crowned world champion if he wins the race and Hamilton does not finish in second position. Or, if Hamilton drops out of the race, or if he finishes only 10th, Rosberg can finish as low as fifth and still win the title.

In other words, Rosberg can easily win the title with half as many victories as Hamilton. By the old scoring system, he would need to win and hope Hamilton finished no better than seventh, or if Hamilton dropped out, Rosberg would have to finish no lower than second.

“I find it artificial and I don’t like it in general,” Rosberg said of the Abu Dhabi scoring after he won the Brazilian Grand Prix two weeks ago. “Of course, now, with the way it is, it’s great for me at the moment, but you know that’s just because of the situation.”

Hamilton, understandably, is less upbeat.

“That’s the way it is. I don’t know what to say about it,” he said. “It’s the same for everyone. But no other championship we have had has it, so it is a bit odd this year.”

Before the season, the series’ promoter, Bernie Ecclestone, proposed the double-points award and the teams accepted it. Then the Mercedes team started dominating, with its drivers winning all but three races — the others were won by the Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo, Vettel’s teammate — and ending up nearly equal on points. No one foresaw that they would arrive at the final race as the only two who could win the title.

Hamilton, who is the leader but who has become something of a strange underdog heading into the finale, remains calm.

“I feel I have done everything I can and that is all you can do,” he said. “I am going to do everything I can do, and whatever the result at the end of it is, that is the way it is.”

“I will have done everything I could,” he added, “and I will go into my winter knowing I did everything I did and not look back and say, ‘If only I had done this or if I only I had done that.”’

But the situation puts into question the value of a move that the series collectively voted into being but that was immediately criticized by fans and some team directors. Some called it unfair, others even said it made the series a farce.

“It would put a big shadow over the championship if it was turned by a technical issue,” said Toto Wolff, the director of the Mercedes team, where Hamilton and Rosberg both drive.

“Nobody likes the double points; I don’t think Bernie even likes them now,” he added, referring to Ecclestone. “It’s going to be something that we should probably be getting rid of for next season.”

Ecclestone said last week that he would not push for the double points again next year.

In 2010 the series tried to avert just this kind of situation — a title won by a driver who had not even half as many victories as his nearest challenger. So it introduced a 7-point difference between the winner of a race, with 25, and the runner-up, with 18.

Apart from deciding the drivers’ title, the double-points system could be a boon or a bust for teams lower down the grid. For all the teams except Mercedes and Red Bull, who are assured of finishing first and second, respectively, the double points can either drastically improve or destroy their season’s prize-money earnings. Millions of dollars of prize money are at stake depending on their finishing position in the championship, which will be decided in Abu Dhabi with a maximum of 86 points available for any one team.

The Williams team could lose its third place in the series to Ferrari; Ferrari could lose its fourth place to McLaren; McLaren could lose its fifth place to Force India, while the rest of the teams stand to win or lose positions lower down that represent millions won or lost.

“Overall, we knew that here in São Paulo it would have been difficult to score points,” Franz Tost, director of the Toro Rosso team, said after the Brazilian Grand Prix on Nov. 9. “But we will try to be in the best possible shape to reach this target in Abu Dhabi, the very important last event of the season.”

Nonetheless, though a last-minute roll-of-the-dice victory may seem unjust, Rosberg winning the title with only half as many victories as Hamilton would not be an aberration in terms of the season overall. Rosberg will have won five or six races nevertheless — more than he has ever won in a season — and when he was not winning a race or suffering a car breakdown, he finished second in all but the Hungarian Grand Prix, when he was fourth. Hamilton finished third in two races, and failed to finish three.

In fact, for a driver who had the reputation of being slower than Hamilton — whose natural speed has never been questioned — Rosberg bested Hamilton in qualifying, winning 10 pole positions to Hamilton’s seven before the final race. In short, the two drivers have been neck-and-neck all season, with Rosberg actually leading the series for a longer period and Hamilton having to play catch up.

Of the two, Rosberg, who at 29 has never before been in contention for the title, appeared to be mentally stronger. He never seemed to lose his cool, while on several occasions Hamilton, a former world champion who also is 29, appeared to crack.

If he does win the title, Rosberg would no doubt have to carry the stigma all his life of having done so with far fewer victories than his rival.

But at least Rosberg would be able to say that he captured the title with more victories than his father, Kéké, who won only one race in the 1982 season when he was crowned champion driving for Williams. Five drivers that season won two races each. And while Kéké won only five Grand Prix races in his entire career, Nico has already won seven.

Rosberg would also become only the second world champion in Formula One history whose father was also champion. Damon Hill won in 1996, following his father’s two titles in the 1960s.

“I absolutely believe I still have the chance to take the title in Abu Dhabi,” Rosberg said. “It won’t be easy, but I’ll be full attack — just as I have been all season. Although this has been my first year fighting for a world championship, I’ve never felt more comfortable than I have done this year.”